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• Turnaround within eleven working days
• Pipes weighing approx. 50 tonnes and measuring 1.8 kilometers in total replaced
• About 25,000 accident-free working hours

A turnaround is always a special event for refinery operators and their service providers. The tight deadline for the turnaround activities at Raffinerie Heide GmbH in northern Germany in September 2015 proved to be particularly challenging for Voith Industrial Services. It meant that the industrial services provider had to coordinate about 200 operational employees on site for ten days and precisely plan their individual tasks and the use of the equipment needed.

Within the scope of the turnaround, Voith Industrial Services, among other activities, overhauled 75 heat exchangers and 60 containers as well as air coolers and columns. In this connection, the industrial services provider used one self-propelled and two aerial bundle extractors. Furthermore, the company was responsible for furnace modifications and the replacement of a Packinox.

Regarding the furnace modifications, Voith Industrial Services disassembled and reassembled the furnace cells PH 301 and PH 302 with the help of a ceiling window and replaced the inlet pipes. The dimensions are really impressive: in total, the team replaced 1,800 meters of pipeline weighing approx. 50 tonnes, made more than 150 welds (including annealing activities) and was responsible for coordinating all inspections of the new pipes.

To replace the Packinox heat exchanger weighing 74 tonnes, Voith Industrial Services used a 500-tonne crane and a 350-tonne wrecking crane. The limited space for the big cranes as well as the transport of large-scale equipment and the Packinox within the plant proved to be particularly challenging. The industrial services provider mastered the challenge by organizing everything very precisely by means of crane arrangement drawings and crane analyses and by taking care of safety and risk analyses.

As a result, the Voith Industrial Services team was able to meet the strict safety requirements: 25,000 accident-free working hours stand for the high service quality. Moreover, all deadlines were met.

Voith Industrial Services has been working with Raffinerie Heide since 2007. “We are very pleased about the trusting relationship and we are proud to have performed yet another contract to our customer’s satisfaction,” said Uwe Lindner, Project Manager at Voith Industrial Services. The customer’s satisfaction is also reflected in the continued cooperation: in June 2016, Voith will again work at Raffinerie Heide.

About Voith Industrial Services:
Voith Industrial Services, a Group Division of Voith GmbH, is one of the leading providers of technical services for key industries such as the automotive, energy, chemical and petrochemical industries and of engineering services. In 2013/2014, the company generated with its about 18,500 employees sales of €1.18 billion at its more than 170 locations worldwide.